The Carrying

Winner of The National Book Critics Circle Award

2018, Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 978-1-57131-512-0 / Pages: 96 / Paperback & Hardcover

Purchase: Milkweed Editions / Bookshop / Amazon / IndieBound

From The Publisher: From National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Ada Limón comes The Carrying—her most powerful collection yet. Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility—"What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?"—and a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: "Every song of this country / has an unsung third stanza, something brutal." And still Limón shows us, as ever, the persistence of hunger, love, and joy, the dizzying fullness of our too-short lives. "Fine then, / I'll take it," she writes. "I'll take it all." In Bright Dead Things, Limón showed us a heart "giant with power, heavy with blood"—"the huge beating genius machine / that thinks, no, it knows, / it's going to come in first." In her follow-up collection, that heart is on full display—even as The Carrying continues further and deeper into the bloodstream, following the hard-won truth of what it means to live in an imperfect world.

Praise & Reviews

"An elegant and vulnerable expression of the aching beauty of an imperfect world."—American Library Association

"In what’s arguably her most accomplished work to date, Limón demonstrates her aptitude for making readers attend to the world in ways they likely never imagined. This is an emotionally versatile collection in which the struggles and joys of the body, the oddities and wonders of nature, and the pains and pleasures of the social coalesce with verve."— One of the Best Books of 2018, Publisher's Weekly

"Each poem is a widening lens of the world, an unburdening of the things we carry deep within ourselves."— Staff pick, The Paris Review

"Ada Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation. Her poetry feels fast, full of detail, often playful, and driven by a conversational voice. This book represents a powerful deepening of the poet’s perspective into themes of loss, chronic pain, fear of the 21st century’s ongoing devastations, concern for the natural world. It’s a book of deep wisdom and urgent vulnerability, driven by language that feels not only beautiful but permanent and powerfully wrought, like a mountain. It leads you to the beautiful bright mountaintop of language, then guides you gently down into the rocky valleys of a conscious human heart." — Tracy K. Smith, recommending The Carrying for The Guardian

"Limón has a novelistic knack for scene, and the narrative lyrics in this remarkable collection, her fifth, could stand as compressed stories about anxiety and the body."—The New York Times

"Evocative dreams and pivotal memories help make this collection a powerful example of how to carry the things that define us without being broken by them."—The Washington Post

"Tender, illuminating. . . . The anxiety of all of life’s realities permeates Limón’s collection, which makes the work feel piercingly of the moment." — San Francisco Chronicle

"Just as The Carrying is perhaps Limón’s most intimate view of the body, it’s also her most external view of America, a country in turmoil. . . . What Limón carries throughout these poems is intense attention and devotion to art. Her new work suggests that this is an imperfect but nonetheless essential salve to a shaken body and a disordered world."— Poetry Foundation

"Ada Limón's latest poetry collection is a masterful blending of the personal and the political — a piercing look into the nature of pain and impermanence. It is a deeply intimate book, but through her generous accounting of her bodily struggles with a crooked spine as a child and infertility as an adult, we see overarching themes of life and death, growth and decay, grief and acceptance. In many ways, it is a paean to nature itself, to the peace in knowing it's both part of us and greater than us — especially when everything else in the world can seem like it's falling apart."—Buzzfeed

"Wherever she’s writing about, Limón’s work is marked by exquisite, minute details that pass by many people."— Rich Copely, Lexington Herald-Leader

"Limón is talented in a way that’s both intimidating and inspiring, and is definitely a strong pillar of contemporary poetry."—Bookriot

"Ada Limon's moving and deeply personal fifth collection of poetry, "The Carrying," chronicles simple joys and profound heartbreak." — Lulu Garcia-Navarro, NPR

"The Carrying is a blunt exploration of loss, and wisely observant of how 'real gladness' and pain manifest in both animals and humans. Limón’s poems personify the twinned-narrative of despair and tenacity that has become part of America’s current political and social reality. Indeed, The Carrying is a spark of courage in our dark and troubled times, one that implores us to remain awake so we can remake our toughest selves 'while everyone else is asleep.'" —PANK

"Limón is talented in a way that’s both intimidating and inspiring, and is definitely a strong pillar of contemporary poetry."—Bookriot

"The Carrying is about the contradictory joys and burdens we all carry. . . . The societal connection between womanhood, motherhood and power is at the core of her work. . . . For Limón, carrying both the joys and sorrows of a child-free life is a testament to the human ability to exist with many things piled on our shoulders at once." — PBS NewsHour

"The Carrying is a deeply intimate collection, and fans of Limón might likely consider it her most personal collection yet. It touches on everything from the current political climate and nature to love and grief; and a fair amount of the collection is about the struggle of infertility, the deep desire to have a child. . . . It’s a spinning world that, increasingly, is turning to poetry like Limón’s to make sense of — or, at least, to assuage the grief of — it all." — "The Carrying Is A Poetry Collection To Help You Make Sense Of The State Of The World Right Now," Bustle Magazine

"I devoured this exquisite collection in one single day, and highly recommend you cancel your plans this weekend to do the same."— 14 New Books You Need to Know This Week, Bustle Magazine

"With the knowing directness of a letter, Limón’s poems speak to the marrow of our everyday condition. She grapples with fertility, hard fought acceptance, and empathy. . . . The Carrying is a vital collection for a noisy, brutal time. The power of Limón’s unflinching examination of grief and loss is only surpassed by her love of beauty and compassion."— BOMB Magazine

"[In The Carrying] the National Book Award-nominated poet pens paeans to the world's limitless capacity to astonish."— O Magazine, "10 Titles to Pick Up Now"

"Finally, I’ve also been loving Ada Limón’s new poems, The Carrying. They are like a winter garden—somber, full of grief and patience, suddenly visible lines from here to there. To watch a poet in full possession of her power tending the earth with this kind of care feels like an inspiration that comes with a chastened edge: time, they remind, is all we have."— LitHub

"For a book metered by grief, there’s a lot of love here—that shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering Limón’s stylistic control and skill. . . . Limón is very good at pacing her poems to leave us satisfied but also curious. . . . One of the best books of the year."— The Millions

"Lyrical, tender, and knowing. . . Ada Limón’s poetry connects the personal and the universal."— Garden & Gun

"Exquisite poems about love, fertility, desire, this natural world we move through, the political climate, so much more." —Roxane Gay, Goodreads

"A master of examining themes from unexpected angles, Limón rotates her topics in kaleidoscopic turns... Page after page, this proves to be a startling and tender, magnificent collection." —Booklist

"The Carrying is one of [Ada Limón's] best. Even in poems about racism, misogyny, violence, and the darkness that often accompanies life, Limón’s resiliency shines through."— Bitch Magazine

"All of Limón's books have found a home on my bookshelf, each volume a heartfelt reckoning of what it is be alive. In her collections, I find a grace that demonstrates her versatility and wisdom as well as a 'surrendering.' She explains that the central question of her work is, 'How do we live in the world?' Yet she’s a poet as comfortable with questions as with answers." —Diana Delgado, Guernica

"Ada Limón is one of the country's finest poets. . . . Honest, lyrical observations on love, loneliness, life, death and all the mysteries in between.  . . . She performs a near-miraculous feat in balancing razor-sharp imagery with deep ambivalence. . . . The Carrying beautifully conveys the power of poetry in an age that needs it most." — Shelf Awareness

From NPR: Ada Limón's previous book, Bright Dead Things, was a National Book Award finalist. Her new collection is her best yet, a much needed shot of if not hope, then perseverance amidst much uncertainty. "Reader," she writes, " want to/ say: Don't die. Even when silvery fish after fish/ comes back belly up, and the country plummets/ into a crepitating crater of hatred, isn't there still/ something singing? The truth is: I don't know." Personal struggles — attempts to conceive a child, chronic pain caused by lifelong spinal issues — mirror and amplify public and political ones. These poems never paint a rosy picture of life in an America at war with itself, and Limón searches herself for the sources of ambivalence and anger. But inspiration comes from unlikely corners, such as a horse "racing, against no one/ but himself and the official clockers, monstrously/ fast and head down so we can see that faded star/ flash on his forehead like this is real gladness." Learning the names of flora and fauna surrounding a new home helps, too: "With each new name, the world expanded."

"Gorgeous, thought-provoking . . . Limón's typically tight narrative lyrics feature simple, striking images . . . fearless."— Publisher's Weekly, starred review

"A stunning collection . . . Limón writes movingly about finding the spectacular in the everyday. . .A reverent, extraordinary take on the world. Don’t miss this life-affirming collection."—Library Journal, starred review

"The Carrying. . . draws the reader in like an ancient forest: dark; pulsing with intricate, layered relationships; hushed yet brimming with sound." — Women's Review of Books

"This is the kind of poetry that strikes that rare balance: deftly crafted and profound but also completely accessible. The collection is about creation, death and everything in between, with so much attention to the thrumming world that just by reading it you become more aware, more in tune with the life around you."— Silas House, Bookpage

"In the dazzling, precise, transformative collection, The Carrying, Ada Limón offers us meditations on mortality, womanhood, the body, and that which grows in the earth, all the while slyly positing: How we should treat each other in this precarious life? Like humans, is her answer. Like humans." — Jami Attenberg

"It is no wonder that Ada Limón's wonderful new book, The Carrying, is full of goldfinches and strawberries and dandelions and hostas and, as she writes, 'all good things that come from the ground.' It's also no wonder that it's full of the life that death makes. And the living that dying is. For this book is a garden. And like a garden, it will nourish you. It will feed you."— Ross Gay

"In her powerful new collection, Ada Limón asks: "What if, instead of carrying// a child, I am supposed to carry grief?" And later: "isn’t there still something singing?" To which I say: yes. In these poems, joy and longing and grief sing with a music that—regardless of what I am burdened or blessed to carry—makes me want to live passionately and fully in the difficult world. The Carrying is a gift. —Natasha Trethewey

"Ada Limón teaches me that language can still surprise me. She shows me that the juxtaposition of words not previously joined can catch me off-guard, make me feel that shimmer of resonance, of curiosity." — Signature Reads